A fantasy addicted, map loving guy says hi

[Eld]

Greetings everyone!

What to say in an introduction of myself?

Well, I'm a German student of history at university, I'm a passionate chess player in a club for more than 12 years now and I like reading fantasy novels. In May 2008 I thought I could do the same that the authors did: to create my own fantasy world. Not just as a blueprint for a novel, but as a real standalone piece of art and my power of imagination. (in my opinion, only such worlds - as middle earth or disk world are examples of that sort - make good worlds for fantasy novels). So I started up inventing my world by drawing an ugly map, which was version zero. Now, even while writing this post, I'm working at version 3.0.

As I wish to do my very best (which is though very limited), I registered here to find some tips and tricks and some feedback. I found the Guild some months ago and are keeping to admire the masterpieces of cartography shown at the gallery.

In my point of view I'm not really a mapper, I'm a world creater (and wannabe author). In the german web there's also a quite big community of world building people, where I'm also known as Eld. This nick refers to a character of my world which will play an important role in history at some point in the future, provided he get's away from the bottle and the thought of being a terrible father... but that's a different kind of story that I may tell sometime in the future... in a well selling novel, I hope.

[arsheesh]

Welcome to the Guild Eld! Well you are in good company, there are world-builders a plenty here (I'm one of them!). As for your mapping skills, well, everyone has to start somewhere but I believe that if you play around with some of the tutorials here you may be able to surprise yourself with what you are capable of. But please post up some WIPs, it would be neat to see your project.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh